I see low end chromebooks often. They are used in schools and whatnot. I have never once seen a high end chromebook in the wild. I'm always slightly surprised when a new one comes out. It's hard to tell if Google is actually serious about Chrome OS or not.

I see low end chromebooks often. They are used in schools and whatnot. I have never once seen a high end chromebook in the wild. I'm always slightly surprised when a new one comes out. It's hard to tell if Google is actually serious about Chrome OS or not.

The problem is, what are you going to do on a high end chromebook?

If they bring steam to Chromebook, then there's a reason for a higher end chromebook.

I remember reading some reports that described Google as a company that has such cache amongst engineers, that it's basically filled with engineers and managers who are super ambitious career-focused high achievers. This in turn means that none of them want to work on maintaining or improving an existing product, they all just want to start new projects so that they'll be seen as the founder of the next big thing.

Combine that with Google making so much advertising money that there's no real pressure for any other division to actually perform, and all of these asinine decisions start making some sense (in that they're less baffling, not that they're less bad).

This wouldn't be about running high-end or even casual games so much, it would be about enabling steam streaming. Already a solid option for local lan streaming, and they recently improved wan streaming, and I'm certain they will be moving toward cloud based ala Stadia soon.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Even high-end Chromebooks have no hardware acceleration. Almost nothing in the Steam library will run on one.

I don't see why many indie or older games couldn't run on a Chromebook if they fix the acceleration problems. Or it could be used Steam Remote Play, which works fine on a Raspberry Pi.

Also keep in mind that Valve's Proton layer can run many Windows games out of the box on Linux. That would open up a huge library of old Windows games that could run fine on an Intel GPU.

$1000 on a laptop that maxes out at Stardew Valley. It just doesn't gel. Someone else said Steam streaming, though, which I could see...although my experience is that Wifi does a horrendous job of supporting streaming.

More to the point, why would you start building support for one of your biggest competitors to your newest product? That's insane.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Honestly, I think the latter point is reason enough to make this happen. There are plenty of indie games that can run just fine on a low-end system, to say nothing of decades of legacy titles.

I don't know why people seem to insist that low-end hardware has no place in PC gaming. There was a lot of this kind of discussion in that thread about Dell's Switch-alike concept as well. It's like people can't conceive of a PC gamer not exclusively playing the latest AAA games on a water-cooled SLI rig or something.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Honestly, I think the latter point is reason enough to make this happen. There are plenty of indie games that can run just fine on a low-end system, to say nothing of decades of legacy titles.

I don't know why people seem to insist that low-end hardware has no place in PC gaming. There was a lot of this kind of discussion in that thread about Dell's Switch-alike concept as well. It's like people can't conceive of a PC gamer not exclusively playing the latest AAA games on a water-cooled SLI rig or something.

I just think the likely target audience would be much better served with a Nintendo Switch.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Honestly, I think the latter point is reason enough to make this happen. There are plenty of indie games that can run just fine on a low-end system, to say nothing of decades of legacy titles.

I don't know why people seem to insist that low-end hardware has no place in PC gaming. There was a lot of this kind of discussion in that thread about Dell's Switch-alike concept as well. It's like people can't conceive of a PC gamer not exclusively playing the latest AAA games on a water-cooled SLI rig or something.

That isn't the point anyone was making. The point was that no one is going to spend HEDT money for hardware that can't do anywhere near as much. Especially so considering the Switch is already there and awesome.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Even high-end Chromebooks have no hardware acceleration. Almost nothing in the Steam library will run on one.

That's not true. High end chromebooks can have i7 processors. They have more than enough horsepower in their built0in GPUs to run casual games.

Hence "almost nothing." There are always going to be some games that can run on it, but the vast majority of Steam game purchases are not for ultra-low-end casual gaming.

And you'd know this how? Oh right, you're talking out your ass. Valve doesn't publish its actual sales statistics to anyone but their vendors. All we are shown is what's "popular" for our personal tastes. There's plenty of games on Steam that will run fine on iGPUs. I have many of them in my own game list that could potentially run on such a system. Google would probably have to subsidize getting any games ported over to ChromeOS just like Valve does for standard Linux cuz I doubt many game houses would bother with anything other than Windows otherwise.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Even high-end Chromebooks have no hardware acceleration. Almost nothing in the Steam library will run on one.

That's not true. High end chromebooks can have i7 processors. They have more than enough horsepower in their built0in GPUs to run casual games.

Hence "almost nothing." There are always going to be some games that can run on it, but the vast majority of Steam game purchases are not for ultra-low-end casual gaming.

A vast majority of games on Steam can run on a toaster as long as it has a bagel setting.

A handful of games, in comparison, need a halfway competent 3D chip from the last decade.

A vanishingly small number, again compared to the whole, require a high-end gaming system.

For better or worse (I say worse) the epidemic of shovelware on Steam has lowered the average system requirements in the store by a wide margin. One publisher has put out 300+ text adventures that could run on a Commodore 64 - totally as stand-alone games for a few dollars each - and shits a new one out about twice a week.

Last time I messed with Linux on a Chromebook through the Google tools I was trying to get it to run Minecraft (about a year ago). It launched Minecraft well enough, but I couldn't force it to run an updated version of Java (either open or closed) which meant the game suffered from a very old bug where you either looked only straight up or straight down. I wonder if it's worth another look.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Honestly, I think the latter point is reason enough to make this happen. There are plenty of indie games that can run just fine on a low-end system, to say nothing of decades of legacy titles.

I don't know why people seem to insist that low-end hardware has no place in PC gaming. There was a lot of this kind of discussion in that thread about Dell's Switch-alike concept as well. It's like people can't conceive of a PC gamer not exclusively playing the latest AAA games on a water-cooled SLI rig or something.

That isn't the point anyone was making. The point was that no one is going to spend HEDT money for hardware that can't do anywhere near as much. Especially so considering the Switch is already there and awesome.

My point is, you don't need to spend HEDT money to make this worthwhile. There are so many games on Steam that can run fine on low-end hardware. Even Atom can run a lot of great games. And that's before we even open up the idea of Steam Link functionality.

Why is everyone obsessed with this idea that only the high end of the market counts?

They'll just block students from installing Steam if they're not completely incompetent. My kids can't even change the wallpaper on their Chromebooks, much less do anything particularly interesting with them.

If this were a backdoor into getting Steam connected to Stadia somehow, that'd be amazing. But this really just looks like the left hand not talking to the right hand about product strategy.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Even high-end Chromebooks have no hardware acceleration. Almost nothing in the Steam library will run on one.

That's not true. High end chromebooks can have i7 processors. They have more than enough horsepower in their built0in GPUs to run casual games.

Hence "almost nothing." There are always going to be some games that can run on it, but the vast majority of Steam game purchases are not for ultra-low-end casual gaming.

A vast majority of games on Steam can run on a toaster as long as it has a bagel setting.

A handful of games, in comparison, need a halfway competent 3D chip from the last decade.

A vanishingly small number, again compared to the whole, require a high-end gaming system.

For better or worse (I say worse) the epidemic of shovelware on Steam has lowered the average system requirements in the store by a wide margin. One publisher has put out 300+ text adventures that could run on a Commodore 64 - totally as stand-alone games for a few dollars each - and shits a new one out about twice a week.

Alright, fair, the shovelware gives lots of options that will run on wheezy integrated graphics.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Honestly, I think the latter point is reason enough to make this happen. There are plenty of indie games that can run just fine on a low-end system, to say nothing of decades of legacy titles.

I don't know why people seem to insist that low-end hardware has no place in PC gaming. There was a lot of this kind of discussion in that thread about Dell's Switch-alike concept as well. It's like people can't conceive of a PC gamer not exclusively playing the latest AAA games on a water-cooled SLI rig or something.

I'm stuck with a Surface Pro 3 4/128GB as my portable for the foreseeable future and go out of my way to buy low-end games that can run on it. It's pretty sad, though, that even ported phone games are getting to be too high of end for that computer.

The article and many of the comments think that only a small percentage of steam games work on Linux.

Valve have a technology based on Wine called Proton. It does an incredible job. From what I've seen, most games play well through it. Your Steam library is not much smaller on Linux than on Windows. And it's built in to the Steam Linux client.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Honestly, I think the latter point is reason enough to make this happen. There are plenty of indie games that can run just fine on a low-end system, to say nothing of decades of legacy titles.

I don't know why people seem to insist that low-end hardware has no place in PC gaming. There was a lot of this kind of discussion in that thread about Dell's Switch-alike concept as well. It's like people can't conceive of a PC gamer not exclusively playing the latest AAA games on a water-cooled SLI rig or something.

This. Honestly it's the decades worth of older games and indie stuff that keeps me gaming on PC. I barely touch the latest "AAA" games anymore as they're generally crap anyway.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Even high-end Chromebooks have no hardware acceleration. Almost nothing in the Steam library will run on one.

I don't see why many indie or older games couldn't run on a Chromebook if they fix the acceleration problems. Or it could be used Steam Remote Play, which works fine on a Raspberry Pi.

Also keep in mind that Valve's Proton layer can run many Windows games out of the box on Linux. That would open up a huge library of old Windows games that could run fine on an Intel GPU.

$1000 on a laptop that maxes out at Stardew Valley. It just doesn't gel. Someone else said Steam streaming, though, which I could see...although my experience is that Wifi does a horrendous job of supporting streaming.

More to the point, why would you start building support for one of your biggest competitors to your newest product? That's insane.

Stardew Valley wouldn't need a $1000 machine to run, it runs just about perfectly on my three year old Core M laptop running Ubuntu, so I'd suspect it would run fine on the cheapest x86 Chromebooks. Hell that Core M laptop can even run Borderlands 2 at 20-30 fps, so I think lightweight or older 3D games would not be a problem. Though of course the value proposition as a gaming machine is terrible for those $1000 Chromebooks.

I do agree that it's weird that they're talking about this at the same time that they're launching Stadia. It does seem like they're competing with themselves, but maybe it's a step towards Steam/Stadia integration.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Even high-end Chromebooks have no hardware acceleration. Almost nothing in the Steam library will run on one.

That's not true. High end chromebooks can have i7 processors. They have more than enough horsepower in their built0in GPUs to run casual games.

Hence "almost nothing." There are always going to be some games that can run on it, but the vast majority of Steam game purchases are not for ultra-low-end casual gaming.

A vast majority of games on Steam can run on a toaster as long as it has a bagel setting.

A handful of games, in comparison, need a halfway competent 3D chip from the last decade.

A vanishingly small number, again compared to the whole, require a high-end gaming system.

For better or worse (I say worse) the epidemic of shovelware on Steam has lowered the average system requirements in the store by a wide margin. One publisher has put out 300+ text adventures that could run on a Commodore 64 - totally as stand-alone games for a few dollars each - and shits a new one out about twice a week.

Alright, fair, the shovelware gives lots of options that will run on wheezy integrated graphics.

There's also a resurgence of pixel graphics, which includes quite a few popular games, and let's face it integrated graphics aren't exactly terrible these days compared to what they used to be. Intel integrated graphics are good enough these days that they've killed the low-end discrete market. (AMD's been there for a while.)

Hardware acceleration is already in ChromeOS stable (on supported platforms). It can certainly be improved, but the infrastructure is there, and it works.

Of course, for "serious" gaming, you need discrete graphics. Even on Windows, laptops with discrete graphics are a bit niche (not super-niche, but not mainstream either). However, how about Chromeboxes? One of those with a decent (not necessarily high-end) GPU might make a cheap Steam device, with all the advantages of ChromeOS.

So, what's the impact for schools that use Chromebooks? Sure, before you could run games on Chromebooks through web browsers, but at least when you're on a wifi network you can filter those sites.

This might throw a huge wrench into a lot of school ITs.

It may also introduce a lot of future gamers into Steam, rather than Epic Games Store.

Edit: It's also shocking to me how many games I own have Linux support. Like, the main "sort by linux support" page, I own 60-70% of the games listed.

No impact for schools. Chromebooks have quite possibly some of the best and easily accessible administration to lock down and or restrict access to specific tools, this includes access to the Linux sub system, not to mention curated app deployment.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Honestly, I think the latter point is reason enough to make this happen. There are plenty of indie games that can run just fine on a low-end system, to say nothing of decades of legacy titles.

I don't know why people seem to insist that low-end hardware has no place in PC gaming. There was a lot of this kind of discussion in that thread about Dell's Switch-alike concept as well. It's like people can't conceive of a PC gamer not exclusively playing the latest AAA games on a water-cooled SLI rig or something.

I just think the likely target audience would be much better served with a Nintendo Switch.

Nope. I bought a Chromebook because it's what my kids use at school (1). It means they can get practice with it's interface at home and have a native connection to their school's Google education suite. The lack of software is a real negative hit as far as I'm concerned (most of the Play store library isn't well suited to Chromebooks). This limits Chromebooks to small market niches. There's the education niche, the web browser and almost-a-real-word-processer niche, and the I can make anything work on Linux as long as I don't mind putting the Chromebook into developer mode niche. Maybe there's others, but I don't know what they are.

So what this really does is expand the options for what you can do natively on a Chromebook. That means someone might pick up a Chromebook for their kids instead of a Switch, or perhaps a PC user with an Android phone might grab one instead of a Windows based cheap tablet/laptop/convertible.

(1) Mostly we use PCs at home. My kids get passing familiarity with Apple when visiting one set of grandparents. We have an old Nexus 7 tablet for Android. I want them fluent with Windows but at least literate with respect to the other systems they have a reasonable chance of encountering.

On the one hand, who would ever buy a high-end enough Chrome book for it to be considered a "gaming" machine.

On the other hand, there are quite a few great games that can run on lower spec machines just fine (Stardew Valley springs to mind) and having those on a lightweight laptop might be nice.

Even high-end Chromebooks have no hardware acceleration. Almost nothing in the Steam library will run on one.

That could change. I mean, why not a Chromebook with an older/mid-range AMD or nVidia mobile GPU, for like $400 or so.

Chromebook gives users, essentially, the simplicity of experience that a console does, more security and less crapware than a Windows laptop (for now, anyhow), but more flexibility to switch from gaming, to something more productive, like Google Docs, art/graphics editting programs, maybe even coding and web dev.

Basically, similar experience to having a Linux mid-range laptop, but easier setup/support for end users. I basically look at ChromeOS as a somewhat locked down and simplified Linux distro, and I can see the use case for that.